The journey that brought me here began in January of 2014, and according to my transcripts, it officially ended in May 2016. At that point in my life, my A to B was earning my Masters degree, and I did it. A to B. Check! By all intents and purposes, I was officially a library media specialist.

With my newly minted degree, I was hired as a middle school librarian in an innovative district about to enter its monumental first year of a 1:1 Chromebook rollout. With the help of my assistant, staff, and administrators, over 900 Chromebooks were unpacked, organized, checked out, and used for the first time in the course of just 3 school days. As soon as the Chromebooks had been distributed, teaching and learning began to shift, and as a result, our library needed to shift with it. The excitement in our school was palpable, and I had found my new A to B.

But as every Future Ready Librarian knows, the journey never really ends, it just changes. One of the main objectives in my new position was to design a more collaborative space. As all 7 middle schools in our district made the transition to 1:1, no longer was it necessary for classes to come to the library to “get” information; it was now at their fingertips. For me, this meant beginning the massive task of weeding our 18 year old collection. Although this is young by some library standards, some of the non-fiction texts hadn’t been checked out since 1999. For reference, I was in 5th grade in 1999! In collaboration with staff and students, I unshelved, sorted, piled, weeded, and ultimately reshelved our entire non-fiction collection.

Letting go of these older resources allowed us to make room for a more Future Ready library media center. My assistant and I knew that to help our students and ourselves get from A to B, we needed to do things we hadn’t done before. From my perspective, every inch of our library was now real estate–an opportunity to transform our space to one that is flexible, comfortable, and Future Ready. By creatively prioritizing our budget to buy new furniture that adapts to our needs, along with re-purposing some of our oldies, but goodies, we have been able to get whiteboard tables on wheels, a green screen, a collaboration station with a screen to hook up your device to present, a 3D printer, and a MakerSpace that is currently in the works.

As I reflect on the first 171 days of my new A to B, I realize that creating a Future Ready Library has as much to do with what stuff we have as it does with the feeling students and teachers get when they are in the space. A sense of community, creativity, and curiosity aren’t available even if you have an open checkbook. Although every student has the same device, their needs, interests, and passions can be very different; the same goes for us as teachers. The library has begun to reflect the uniqueness of each of our own A to B, in all facets: 21st century skill building, socially, emotionally, and academically. As Future Ready Librarians, we are all tasked with fostering an environment that helps us get our students from their A to their B.

Contributed by Kristen Mattson, LMC Director, Waubonsie Valley High School This blog has primarily served as a space for the librarians of Indian Prairie School District 204 to share their own stories with one another and members of our community. In this post, though, we would like to present you with a case study on […]

This blog post is about a collaborative project between a high school librarian and an elementary school librarian. Since the project was collaborative, we thought the blog post should be too! Enjoy a blog from two perspectives: written by Michelle Shiles, elementary librarian (in blue) and Kristen Mattson, high school librarian (in green). Tomorrow is World […]

Contributed by Donna Kouri, elementary librarian This blog has primarily served as a space for the librarians of Indian Prairie School District 204 to share their own stories with one another and members of our community. In this post, though, we would like to present you with a case study on Donna Kouri’s library that […]

When I started my position as an Instructional Technology Specialist in Indian Prairie School District, I would never have guessed that four years later I would have the opportunity to write a blog post in honor of our librarians…yet here I am. What my boss at the time didn’t know, and my fellow librarians still […]

Contributed by Dawn Vieira, elementary librarian Makerspaces… it’s all the buzz in the library world right now. All around school and public librarians are finding ways to reinvent their space to give their patrons the opportunity to create. Sometimes it can be via technology such as Makey Makey or a 3-D printer, but it can […]

Contributed by Lynn Domek, NBCT and elementary librarian This year I wanted to create a sustainable MakerSpace in the library to be used at any time of the day for drop in students and whole classes. I took into account the President’s new initiative, “Computer Science for All,” to empower all American students from kindergarten through high school to […] […]

Contributed by Donna Kouri, elementary librarian This year our elementary school implemented Genius Hour for students in grades 1-5. We hold it three times a week for 40 minutes each day. All students have it at the same time which has been a wonderful, although unexpected, gift. During Genius Hour, students work on a project […]

Contributed by Blaire Ranucci, elementary librarian We have been very fortunate in my K-5 building to have received funding to launch a Creator Space. What began as a set of maker resources from our district (robots, osmos, makey makeys, etc) has expanded into a place of exploration in my building. To fully get the idea […]

Contributed by Natalie Hoyle Ross, NBCT and elementary librarian It is not unusual to see a librarian advocating for the LMC’s MakerSpace; however, it is quite another to have a student take on that role. Our biggest advocate of our Spring Brook MakerSpace is Ethan. When Ethan realized we were featuring one of his favorite pieces of […]